personal stories of food, cooking, stuff & things

It’s a Doggy Dog World (and we’re just living in it)

The Kid has a rescue dog; a beautiful little husky (we think). Her name is Bella, and she has eyes the color of a Luna moth’s wing.

She really is the sweetest thing, but dumb as a box of soup and a tad squirrely. She also should switch to decaf as soon as possible. I’ve never in my life seen a dog with more energy. There is no off switch.

The Kid is in Chicago this week. That means we have grand-dogger duty. With Bella in the house, there’s never a dull moment.

You should witness my child around any dog. There is squealing, baby talk and high-pitched cries of “Puppy!”

They’re the only thing The Kid gets squishy and sentimental over…

But the response is entirely to be expected. Aside from time taken to mourn lost companions, we’ve had dogs almost our entire marriage. When we brought The Kid home from the hospital, our seven-year-old chow, Harry met her outside in order to minimize any territorial instincts.

Harry was somewhat different. The night we brought him home, our puppy hid under the bed for three days. He was so skittish and easily startled many of our friends called him Scary Harry. It was pretty apt—among many other things our boy was literally, no foolin’, afraid of ice cream. Even the kind made specifically for dogs. We think maybe his mom drank heavily while pregnant.

While this looks like Harry, it is not him. The only photos we have of him are of his butt, as he ran away in terror. He was afraid of cameras, too.

On my 21st birthday Petey gave me Harry. Seven years later he had the meet & greet with our brand new baby in the driveway.

He watched over his little person, and taught that little person to love dogs, and treat them kindly.

When The Kid was in Kindergarten, we lost our Harry. Six months went by and we decided it was time to share our lives with a four-legged again.

The doggy gods were smiling upon us the day we met Steve.Even though he looked like a text book Akita, we’re pretty sure that he was a 105 pound heart, wrapped in a doggy suit. He was the gentlest dog we’d ever had.

If there were children playing outside, and one of them screamed, regardless the reason Steve had to go outside and do what looked like a head count to make sure all of his children were safe and sound. Once he adopted a roly poly bug. He kept it for three days until he loved it to death.

Steve and I had a game where I would do an imitation of a dog growl. We would slap our hands/front paws on the floor in a mock attempt to catch each other. All the while he would be doing his best imitation of my growl.

He was a goofball who indulged my every odd whim. He’d do anything to make us smile…

The day before he died, he was so weak, but he still made his best effort to slap my hand and growl my growl. I think he didn’t want to disappoint me. His whole life long he never disappointed me. It’s been ten years, but thinking about him still breaks my heart.

My dad and Riker. To give you an idea of the size of our pooch; Dad is 6’4″.

Now we have Riker, who’s named for a character in Star Trek. He’s a 200-pound Anatolian shepherd with sweet, caramel-colored eyes. When you scratch him behind the ears, he honest-to-goodness purrs. He is the most loving pooch we’ve ever owned

We all think, with dogs, that we’re in charge. But if you serve someone breakfast in bed, and clean up their lawn bombs, it doesn’t matter what you think. That dog is your boss.

And then to top it off, we go and let them use our heart as a chew toy.

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I'm debbie matthews, a food columnist for the Henderson Daily Dispatch and the Sanford Herald in North Carolina. Recently I've begun writing the odd column for Indy Week, an awesome independent paper in the Triangle.
I hope you'll enjoy your visit. And please, don't be afraid to tell me what you think.